


daughters of the sun

by loyaulte_me_lie



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Captain America: The Winter Soldier Compliant, F/M, Ignores all canon after that, M/M, Minor Character(s), Redeemed Brock Rumlow, Sequel, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Soulmates, well redemption is a work in progress
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-26
Updated: 2018-04-26
Packaged: 2019-04-28 09:06:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,686
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14445951
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/loyaulte_me_lie/pseuds/loyaulte_me_lie
Summary: The past has a nasty way of sneaking up on you. That's a truth you should never forget. //. Beth and Brock attempt to move on. A sequel to chapter #129 of ozhawk's The Crackship Armada.





	daughters of the sun

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ozhawk](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ozhawk/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Soulmate Shorts AKA The Crackship Armada](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2658407) by [ozhawk](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ozhawk/pseuds/ozhawk). 



> This is the result of extreme coursework procrastination. I am supposed to have spent this morning writing about peat bogs and paleoclimates, but eh, this story was bugging me instead – what can you do? A sequel to #129 of the amazing ozhawk’s Crackship Armada, I would highly recommend that you read that first or this won’t make much sense.  
> Warnings for: suggestions of suicide and torture (very vague, but it’s there).  
> All quotes in bold are from Circe by Madeline Miller (it just got released and it is the most amazing thing and go read it if you haven’t).

**“How do you bear it?” he said.**

**My eyes gave off a faint light, and by it I could see his face. It was a surprise to realise he was waiting for an answer. That he believed I had one. I thought of another dim room, with another prisoner. He had been a craftsman also. On the foundation of his knowledge, civilisation had been built. Prometheus’ words, deep-running as roots, had waited in me all this time.**

**“We bear it was best we can,” I said.**

*****

They move in together after a week, and it’s the talk of the town. “Who would have known it?” the librarian says to anyone who will listen. “Our little Elizabeth, moving in with that gorgeous new Sheriff.”

Beth knows the gossip never stops in a town like hers, learns to avoid the questions from everyone with a smile and a non-answer knowing that whatever she says will just fan the flames further. It’ll die down soon enough, she reckons. It’s just because he’s new and handsome, and small towns love a good romance. A girl comes back from college in the big city and finds her sweetheart waiting for her at home, how lovely and wholesome and _Kansas._ She laughs as she deflects another question from one of her mother’s friends in the store, thinking about how they’d react if they knew about the words printed over the left side of her stomach, about the way she’d walked into her room to find him sitting on her sofa with a gun.

The night before she goes, Beth’s mother comes into her room. Beth is sitting on the floor, surrounded by towers of books and the detritus of twenty-four years spent growing up within these four walls. “Remember this?” she asks, holding up a photo of them by the river, three teenage boys and a little girl shrieking with laughter as they kick up glittering, sunlit water.

“Are you sure about him?” Beth’s mother has never had time for anything but bluntness, and Beth puts the photo down.

“Yes.”

“It’s just…it’s been so soon. I know you met him in New York and all, but it’s only been a week and he’s so much older than you, and…”

“Mom.” Beth says. “It’s fine. It will be fine. I love him.”

“You’ve known him a week!”

“I _know_ , Mom, but it’s just…he’s…” she hadn’t wanted to say anything, to open up the endless infinity of questions she knew would follow but, “he’s my soulmate.”

“What? You didn’t say a thing!” Her mother’s voice is edged with shrillness. “Elizabeth Anne Jackson, why did you keep it from us?”

“Things were confusing, Mom, I can’t really say more than that, and…”

“I’m your _mother._ ”

“I _know,_ but there are some things I have to keep to myself. I was just as surprised as finding him here as you all were that I knew him. And you can’t tell anyone else. I know what this town’s like, and I don’t want anyone poking Brock about it.”

Her mother harrumphs, and Beth holds her stare the same unyielding way she’d learnt from Lib back at the diner. Her mother looks away first, and then says, eventually, “Are you going to make an honest man out of him, then?”

Beth bursts into laughter.

*

_She steps off the train to the smell of manure, and the bird-chatter lively in the trees. Her bags are cutting into her hands, but the sunlight drips warmth onto her face and down the neck of her shirt, and she shivers happily, unable to stop the smile stretching out the corners of her mouth. Behind her, the train doors hiss shut, and it moves off sinuously along the track towards the mountains, which she can just about see over the edge of the station building, a shimmering hazy line right at the edge of the sky._

_“Aunt Beth!” she hears, and turns into the embrace of her niece, dropping her bags with a clunk and wrapping her arms around her._

_“Hey, Mouse, it’s so good to see you,” she mumbles into wheat-coloured, strawberry-scented hair._

_“Welcome home,” Marigold says. Beth feels the words vibrate into her bones. Home. She’s home._

*

The house is the kind of sweet she used to draw as a child, hunched into the fields a little way out of town with a veranda and a vegetable garden and vines crawling up the sides. Brock helps her to bring her things inside, and she trails her fingers over the walls as she follows him up the creaking stairs.

“This is our room, if that’s okay,” he says, and she stands in the doorway and smiles at the way the light, honey-coloured and thick, like springtime, tumbles through the big windows.

“It’s lovely,” she says.

“I thought you might want to decorate it, a bit. You’re probably better at that stuff than me. We could get a desk in here, for you to write at, or there’s another room that might make a good office.”

“Show me.” She links her hand with his free one, and he takes her down the little corridor to the back of the house, to a smaller room with a sloping ceiling and a window-seat and the perfect nook for a desk and pin-board for all her plot ideas. He’s quiet, watching her face as she stands at the window and splays her fingers against the glass, looking out over the rippling fields of wheat, the mountains in the distance with the town nestled just before them, and the sky an endless stretch of electric blue. A piece of hair tumbles out of the loose knot she’s pulled it into, and after a moment, she tears herself away from the view, stepping back into his orbit and his arms, resting her head against his shoulder.

“I missed the sky,” is all she says. He holds her closer, brushing his fingers against her shoulder-blade. After a moment, she lifts her head; she’s close enough that he can see the flecks of green in her eyes, the roughness of the skin over her cheekbones. “You sure you’re gonna be happy here, after the city?”

“I’m tired of being on the run. Settling down for a bit will do me some good, and besides, I’m not going anywhere that you’re not going to be, so…”

“This is it,” she finishes his sentence for him, and smiles, all fresh air and softness and hope. “Start of our new life, Mr Sheriff.”

“Let’s hope it’s happier than the last,” he says, and she winds her arms around his neck and kisses him, hesitantly to start with, then with more confidence, and he wonders what the hell he’s done to land him with this woman, with this place, with this chance to start again.

*

The time unfurls lazily around here, he thinks to himself a few months later, working through the pile of reports he’d brought back with him from the station and watching Beth pick the flowers in the garden outside. Her skirt flutters around her knees, and there is a pen sticking out of her hair, an ink-smudge on her cheek where she must have wiped it. Their wedding photo smiles at him from the windowsill, and he can’t stop himself from smiling back at it.

 _Marry me,_ Beth had said, sitting in their garden with starlight in her hair and her glass of wine nestled in the grass. She’d swung their new swing-seat back and forth, tip-toeing the ground with her bare feet.

 _Thought proposing was my job, sweetheart,_ he’d said to cover up the way his heart had jumped right into his throat.

 _I’m a feminist,_ she’d pointed out. _Why should the guy have to go to all the effort when I’m perfectly capable of proposing to my soul-mate myself? So, do you wanna get hitched?_

 _I won’t answer until you do it properly,_ he’d told her, just to make her laugh, and she’d tipsily pulled herself upright, found a blade of grass and twisted it into a ring, nearly knocking her wine glass over in the process. She’d tossed her hair and shakily lowered herself down onto one knee.

 _Brock Rumlow, I am completely and hopelessly in love with you, will you marry me?_ She’d said, looking up at him through her eyelashes, and he hadn’t been able to stop the smile then, even if he’d wanted to.

 _Elizabeth Anne Jackson, it would be my pleasure,_ he’d said, and she’d put the grass ring onto his finger, and then shrieked with laughter as he’d pulled her into his arms, kissing her fiercely.

He shakes his head and goes back to the reports: nothing that serious has happened here since he arrived. He wonders whether it’s the army discipline he’d used to smack his junior officers into some semblance of order, or just the fact he’s a hard bastard from New York who is used to dealing with much, _much_ bigger fry than abusive partners and kids who’ve had too much to drink scares people into toeing the line. Beth has started singing outside, her voice a little rough and rusty, half-formed words drifting through the open door. The gold of her wedding ring gleams from her finger as she comes in with armfuls of flowers, pollen dusting her tanned arms. He wonders how on earth she ever survived in New York, this woman of springtime and wheatfields and endless smiles. Once the flowers have been arranged, she switches on the radio and slides into the chair opposite him, flipping open her notebook.

_And the evening news…there’s been another explosion at a farm-house just outside of Kansas City, marking the third of these events in the area in the last week. Eight casualties have been confirmed so far, but the emergency services say that the death toll might rise._

He heaves a sigh and turns over a page.

“One of yours?” Beth asks, quietly.

“Yeah,” he says. “Good fucking riddance.”

*

**It was my first lesson. Beneath the smooth, familiar face of things is another that waits to tear the world in two.**

*

_Before he’d come out here, hopping on a train bound for fresh air and leaving the remains of himself buried in the bones of the city from which he’d come, he’d left a memory stick hidden in the park around the corner from Avengers Tower, bought a burner phone and taken the subway out of the centre of the city._

_“Information on HYDRA,” he’d said to the smooth, English voice which had answered, given the co-ordinates of the package. It’s a risk worth taking, he thinks, a last chance at redemption before the time passes and the wound heals and there’s nothing left to do but live with the knowledge of his past festering away inside his chest as the years peel away. “Hope it helps.”_

_[seconds later, JARVIS had interrupted a workout session to say: “Captain Rogers, an informant has left some material on HYDRA in Lafayette Park on the next block, however I matched his voice to one Agent Brock Rumlow of HYDRA, one of the primary targets on your list.”_

_“Thanks Jarvis. We’re going. Tell Clint to suit up.”]_

*

**I watched him in the pearl-grey light of dawn, the tremors of his face, the striving tension in his shoulders. He twisted the sheets as if they were opponents he tried to throw in a wrestling match. A year of peaceful days he had stayed with me, and still every night he went to war.**

*

One night, she wakes from a nightmare of grasping, alien hands and being huddled into the bank with Lib and some of the customers from the diner, waiting to be vaporised by the shadowy figures lining the walls, to find Brock’s side of the bed empty. She lies there, still and silent for a moment, and then heaves herself out of bed, pulls on her pyjamas, not sure she can go back to sleep with the memories pacing through her thoughts and no-one to hold onto to keep them all away.

The night air is heavy with the smell of lavender, and the starlight drizzles from between the clouds. Brock is sitting on the veranda, twisting a mug of something between his hands. She sits down next to him, but he doesn’t move. The summer’s been long this year, she thinks, staring out beyond their little pool of light. A moth buzzes around the lamp. Brock shifts beside her.

“I can’t stop thinking about them,” he says, eventually, and she knows how difficult it is, for him to give this up. She stays quiet, studies the horizon as though he’s not there. He takes a deep breath. “Every night, Beth. I can’t close my eyes without thinking about it all.”

“Honey,” she says, leaning her head against his shoulder. The steam from his tea curls into her face.

“Every day I wonder when the other shoe is going to drop, when I’m going to get sucked back into it.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

His laugh is harsh. “Not particularly.” Then, as though her question has burst a dam, as though once he’s started not even a supernova could stop him, the words tumbling out, half-hurried and desperate: “I didn’t even realise, to start with, but then SHIELD and HYDRA have been one and the same for years, long before I was recruited. And then you don’t know which orders are which, and then you give up caring because it’s all the same, it’s all people killing each other, and stealing shit, and making grabs for power, and, like, what does power do except violence? And we were going to put an end to it, we were going to have world peace, but now I’m out of it, I see just how fucked up Pierce’s plan was. He was going to kill so many people, Beth, and not like in a fair fire-fight, just pick them off from the sky. They’d never even know what hit them, just boom, one second later they’re dead.”

“But you got out,” she says.

“Only after you. I was still with them after DC, even though I knew it was wrong, even though I wanted to run.”

The silence stretches out its hands. Beth exhales. “What made you stop?” she asks, cautious. For a while, she wonders if he’s going to respond, but then:

 “You know the Winter Soldier?”

“Heard of him on the news, yes.”

“I was his handler, towards the end. There was an incident, on the bridge, and afterwards, I was pulled into his prep chamber. I still don’t know why, they never used to let us field agents in that room, but this time they did. There was a chair, a brain-washing machine, and that was when I knew, standing and watching him scream in it, that I couldn’t work for them anymore, that enough was enough. But I was in too deep, I couldn’t see a way out, Beth, I was stuck there, playing my part and saying my lines, I just…I wish I’d just gone, just disappeared away and never had to follow through.”

There is quiet, for a moment, and she turns her face into his shoulder, breathing in the smell of him and wishing she knew what to say, how to rip his past to shreds for him and let it fly in the wind.

“I’m so sorry,” is all she settles on, and he huffs.

“Nothing to be sorry for. I made my own bed. Guess that’s what cowardice gets you.”

“You are _not_ a coward,” she says, surprising herself with the ferocity colouring her voice. “Bloody hell, Brock, you kept going. You got out of there.”

“Through a collapsed building and a suicide mission to capture Captain America.” His voice is wry now, rather than self-loathing. He shifts, puts his arm around her waist. “You’re the one who finally helped me get out, you know.”

“Mmhm?”

“I wanted to be a better person for you. You don’t deserve a sick bastard who worked for a terrorist organisation. Beth, you deserve _everything._ ”

“No, I don’t,” she says. “Don’t put me up on a pedestal, that never ends well in books. I’ve got you, and me, and my writing, and our life, and that’s all I need. Maybe you’re a little fucked up, well, so I am, but that’s fine. People are allowed to make mistakes.”

“I’m more than a little fucked up,” he mutters. She pulls his face down to kiss him, slow and wet, pulling away after a moment.

“Fucked up people make better characters,” she tells him, feeling the way his sudden smile thrums against her mouth.

“I’ll trust you on that one.” Then, “Why are you awake at this time, anyway?”

“Nightmares too,” Beth says. He twists to pull her closer. “Less of my conscience, and more about aliens. I’d just started at the diner when the Chitauri attacked, so…”

“God, you were caught up in it?”

“Steve saved my life. Well, and a load of others. They’d caught us, cornered into the bank across the street, and I’m pretty sure they were going to vaporise us, but he leapt into the window and got everyone out. I had counselling and everything after, I’m fine, but I just…sometimes it creeps up on me, you know?”

They sit in the quiet, in each other’s arms, listening to the rustle of the fields, the buzz of the moth’s wings. “It’s good to talk things out,” she says, eventually. “Don’t let it build up. And I’m always here for you, you know that?”

“You’re too kind for your own good,” he mumbles into her hair. Somewhere in the fields, a bird starts to sing. Beth wonders what it knows that she doesn’t; how can it tell that the day is dawning? It’s right, though, as the birds always are. Brock’s thumb rubs against her upper arm, and they stay, watching the dawn paint the sky gold.

*

**Perhaps it was because her father was a nothing river, and her mother a sharp-faced sea nymph, and she liked the thought of taking something from the daughter of the sun.**

*

If there is one thing about the city she misses, she thinks, staring out at the translucent mist of rain that has come sweeping down from the mountains, it’s the diversity. All sorts of faces and stories passed through the diner, lives of different colours in perpetual Brownian motion thronged in the streets, there was always a new pair of eyes to imagine herself behind. She taps her pen against her teeth, twists her wedding ring around her finger. Her thoughts flitter distractedly from old white dresses to Brock’s smiles (barely there, then all at once, lightning, electricity through her veins), to Steve. She wonders what he’s up to now, whether Avengers’ Tower has become any happier for him since the days when he’d sit and sketch in the diner and tell her about whatever Tony Stark’s latest unclassified annoyance was. She’d always been secretly pleased to be on the end of these tales, someone trusted enough not to go to the press with them, not-quite friends but definitely more than acquaintances.

But then again, she thinks, looking down at the pages she’s written, she’s lost Steve’s stories but what has she gained? Time to write, instead of crammed between classes and shifts, early morning kisses, a garden full of flowers, afternoons down at the farm helping her brother, big family dinners, all of them crammed around one table, nights curled up in Brock’s arms, and this quiet, fizzing happiness that sits just in the centre of her ribcage and is apparently all she’s ever been looking for.

There’s a knock at the door, a bullet tearing her reverie apart. She watches the pieces of her daydreams float off into nothingness, like soapsuds, and heaves herself up. Did Shelby say she was going to bring Mouse over after school?

It’s not Shelby’s car in the drive. It’s a police cruiser, not Brock’s, she thinks – Brock never forgets his key. She opens the door, half-curious, half-worried, to the face of Officer Alcott, Brock’s second-in-command, his hat in his hands. His hair is dusted with drizzle, and there are spots of red burning high on his cheeks. He won’t meet her eyes. Her stomach tumbles into a black hole, and she grips the door jamb, willing herself to take a breath.

“Where’s Brock?” she asks, in a voice she doesn’t recognise as her own.

“Mrs Rumlow, I’m so sorry,” he says. Black spots tease the edge of her vision, and she takes another breath, willing herself to stop thinking about Brock lying dead somewhere, of guns, and ambushes, and the way she’d playfully pushed him off her this morning when the alarm had shrilled eight o’clock and he hadn’t wanted to go. His ‘I love you.’ Her, sleepy, ‘you’re going to be late.’ She braces herself, deep in her bones. He can’t be dead. He’s better than that, she tries to reassure herself. He was a commando, he’ll be _fine._ Scariest guy in town.  “Sheriff Rumlow has been arrested.”

“What?” the word comes out of her mouth before she gives it permission to, high with shock and terror. A small part of her locks away what she knows of his past, deep down in the centre of her body, somewhere below her heart and lungs. HYDRA, she thinks. Terrorist organisation, at least, he used to be – but he’s changed, he’s not anymore, he’s trying to atone. She doesn’t think anyone who didn’t care about their past would have so many nightmares, would sit on their veranda with a mug of tea in his hand and try and reason through what had led him down that path, how he’d strayed so far away from the man he’d always wanted to be, would hand over information to the team trying to stamp HYDRA out once and for all. Anyway, he’s never told her the specifics; all she knows are dusty regrets of violence, and a long-renounced ideology. That’s all.

“The Avengers,” Officer Alcott says, glumly. He finally manages to look up. “There was another explosion near here; they were already there, apparently it was some other bloody ET, but we had clean-up duty. Captain America recognised him, took him away.”

“No, no, shit,” she says. “I…”

“Are you gonna be okay, Mrs Rumlow? Do you need me to phone someone for you?”

“I’ll be fine,” she says, but her voice is wobbling and cracking and she can tell he doesn’t believe her. “Thank you, Officer. Have a good day now.”

She shuts the door and stands there for long, endless, unpeeling minutes; it’s only when she hears the crunching of his tyres on the gravel that the tears deluge down her cheeks, soaking into the neck of Brock’s jumper that she’d taken from his wardrobe that morning. _No,_ is the only thing she can think. _No._

(Later, when she picks up the phone, her eyes are dry and her voice is steady and calm. “Hey Shelby, would you mind dropping me off at the train station this afternoon? Brock’s out on call, and my best friend from New York is having an emergency, I need to get a flight down to see her.”)

*

 _Her room is all kinds of pretty, he thinks as he waits for her to get home, looking at the knitted blankets, the photos pinned up everywhere, the mugs hanging from their tree in her little kitchenette. Colourful, something a civilian can afford to have. He doesn’t remember ever living somewhere with so much character: it doesn’t matter that the wallpaper is peeling a little, and that there is a stack of dirty dishes in the sink, because this place_ sings.

_He sits down on the sofa, pulling his gun out of the holster and crossing his legs, waiting for the waitress to come home. The metal gleams darkly, suddenly too heavy and out of place. He closes his eyes for a moment, hopes he doesn’t have to use it, hopes she won’t put up a fight. She’ll come in and she’ll scream, probably, they always do, just like the movies and books tell them, and then he’ll be able to use her to get to Rogers and hopefully Rogers will put an end to all of this, will put a bullet through his brain and erase all the things that haunt him. Knowing Rogers, though, Brock’s likely just to end up in high security prison, drowning in everything he wishes he’d never done until his life finally decides to sputter out._

_There are footsteps on the hallway, a key in the lock, and he takes in a breath, raises the weapon. She is very nearly pretty, standing there in her uniform with a big bag slung over one shoulder. Blonde hair curls around her face, and she’s gone white. Her blue-green eyes are opening wider in terror, her mouth about to scream, but no sound ever makes it out._

_“Don’t scream,” he says, even so, a small part of him laughing at how much he sounds like one of those clichés that fill popular culture. “You won’t like what will happen if you do.”_

_It’s all going so well, little steps towards making an attempt on Rogers, on getting what he deserves: death or a prison cell, but then she suddenly discovered her ill-advised courage, shook off her fright, and snapped:_

_“No! No, you asshole, I_ won’t _be used so you can hurt him!”_

_Field-lines shift, gravity flexes. He makes a decision, and then he’s gone, leaving his soulmate behind with her rumpled blouse, and confused (terrified) pleading (loathing) expression, her hand out-stretched, light behind him and nothing but darkness ahead._

*

**The next morning, I stepped into my father’s chariot and we lurched into the dark sky without a word. The air blew past us; night receded at every turning of the wheels. I looked over the side, trying to track the rivers and seas, the shadowed valleys, but we were going too fast, and I recognised nothing.**

*

The journey condenses itself into a flickering moment, squeezes awful tense hours of waiting in the departure lounge and queueing through security into nothing. The guy sitting next to her on the plane had tried it on, but she’d given him a blistering look, and he’d recoiled behind a newspaper, muttering something about crazy women who couldn’t take a joke. Now, it is in its last dregs - she is sitting on the train into the city from Manhattan Regional Airport, staring so blankly into space she knows she’s attracting worried looks from the parents in the next compartment over.

“Mommy,” she hears the little girl ask at one point. “Is that lady okay? She looks sad.”

“Sure she is, sweetheart,” the mom says unconvincingly, and they get off at the next station, the little girl watching her over one shoulder until the train moves off, further into the city. Now she’s here, she has no idea what to do, perhaps she shouldn’t have been so impulsive, perhaps she should have come clean to her mother, or Shelby, more likely, Shelby has a better head on her shoulders for a crisis. Will Steve even remember her? Her body is sitting on that train, but her mind is wandering without a map or a north-star; all she knows is that she’s got to do this. She’s got to bring him home.

*

Beth walks past the diner to get from the subway station to Avengers Tower. Nothing and everything have changed; there are different faces on the street, a new waitress is washing the windows. She tilts her head up to look up at the mirrored surface of the tower reflecting the world back at her, reminding herself how to breathe in petrol fumes instead of lavender, how to close off her ears to the city’s cacophonous soundtrack, how to walk with purpose towards those revolving doors. She pushes her way in, and the air dampens. Her breath is coming quick in her lungs. There are no obvious security guards here, but Tony Stark built this tower – there don’t need to be.

She makes her way over to the reception, is greeted by a woman with a sharp suit and a sleek topknot, who looks faintly disparaging at Beth’s old clothes, the farm-smell that sticks to her even after a five-hour journey. “I need to see Captain Rogers,” she says.

“So does everyone, madam,” the receptionist sniffs. “I’m afraid I can’t…”

“He knows me. I used to work at the diner, over there. My name’s Beth Jackson, I’ve got ID to prove it.”

“Captain Rogers has not informed me of any visitors.”

“You don’t understand,” Beth says. “I just…”

“Please leave before I have to call Security.” The receptionist just sounds bored now, and that’s when Beth sees red, flaming at the edge of her vision. She leans across the counter, the coppery tang of anger and bravery sparking at the tip of her tongue.

“Look, what’s your name? _Eloise._ Look, Eloise, I know Steve because he used to stop every morning at my diner for coffee after his run. I can tell you his order if that would make you believe me. They have my _husband_ up there, because he was arrested earlier today at an incident in Kansas. There’s been a mix-up and I need to see Steve to sort this out, so, if you can, please radio up to say that Beth Jackson is here to see him, and I promise he will come down.”

The receptionist glares at her for a moment, and then gets out of her chair, tapping her earpiece and murmuring into it. Beth takes a slow, deep breath, her legs suddenly shaky. She’s going to get tossed out of here, she knows it, and she’ll have just wasted three hundred pounds on a useless flight to try and save Brock from something she has no hope in hell against; what’s one woman, screaming into a hurricane?

There is the tap of the receptionist’s shoes, and she re-appears, still looking as though there is shit under her nose. “ID,” she says, curtly. Beth stares at her for a second, then digs her passport out of her bag, flips it to the photo-page. The receptionist takes her time looking at it, then bends her head to say something into her earpiece again. There’s a moment of stillness, and then the elevator doors hiss open.

“Right there,” the receptionist says. “Have a good visit.”

“Thank you,” Beth reminds herself to say, heading over to the open doors. There are no buttons in this elevator, and so she stands stiff and silent and awkward until the doors hiss shut, and the elevator begins to glide upwards. She closes her eyes and rehearses what she wants to say, what she’s been thinking about for the past five hours, the _I know he’s done bad things, but he’s really changed, I promise he has, and we’re just living out in Kansas and not hurting anyone, and…_

She opens her eyes to a chime, and the doors sliding open, and there is Steve, standing in the doorway.

“It is you, Beth,” he says, stepping back to let her out of the elevator. “This is a surprise. Thought you’d moved back to Kansas.”

She’s mute for a moment, trying to remember what she was going to say, but all her words have fled her head; she’s an author, not an orator, and what is an author without her words? She can’t make them up on the fly, so she just puts an arm around herself and says, “Yeah, I did. I just…”

He gives her a smile, and says, “It’s okay, come sit down. Do you want a coffee? You look exhausted.”

“Actually, that would be really lovely,” she says, wanting to cry because this is so Steve, to be so gracious with someone he barely knows showing up at his apartment, to go and make coffee and invite her to sit down as though she’s not here to ask him to release one of his biggest enemies. She drifts after him into the kitchen. One of the walls is entirely glass, and she can see the city towers up close now, a forest of grey and brown spiking the sky and rolling out into the distance. Worry for Brock is clawing her insides with sharp nails, her hands are slick with sweat, and it is taking far too much effort to remind herself to breathe normally.

“Cream, sugar?”

“Both, thanks.”

The kitchen is the kind of sleek she hates, coming from Kansas with its battered wooden tables, and big, ungainly stoves, and mismatched crockery lining the shelves. Metal and plastic and glass have no soul, she thinks, not like her kitchen at home with the yellow cupboards and jugs of flowers and cracked linoleum floor. Steve hands her a big mug and leads her back into the room with the elevator entrance. She takes a seat on one of the leather couches, twisting the mug between her hands just the way Brock does when he’s thinking about something.

“So, how have you been?” Steve says, and Beth realises that she should have said something, she’s the one who’s imposed herself, she should be the one making the effort, making conversation, cutting to the chase and asking him what she came for.

“Good,” she says. “Starting writing properly now, like I said I was going to. You still drawing?” She winces, what an idiotic question! It’s Steve Rogers, of course he’s still drawing. That man has art in his bones the way she has words inked through hers; the day he stops is the day the world will never be the same.

“Yes, I am. I’m taking some classes now, you know those ones you recommended before you left? They’re really good.”

“I’m glad,” she says, watching the way Steve is watching her, cataloguing her edges, knowing something’s different but not being quite able to put a finger on it. He spots her ring and smiles at her again.

“Should I be offering congratulations? Who’s the lucky man?”

“That’s actually what I came to talk to you about,” she says, noting the way he stiffens slightly.

“Is he hurting you?”

“No, no, not at all, he’s…actually…I really don’t know the best way to do this. I only used my maiden name to get in the front door. Steve, I...I'm...my married name...”

Steve is giving her a strange look, clearly wondering why she's suddenly stuttering over her words. She pulls her courage close. "My name,  _now,_ is Beth Rumlow."

An explosive release of breath. Beth holds all of her muscles tight, fight-or-flight coiled in her neurones. “Thought you’d recognise it,” is all she says, through the sudden lump in her throat.

“Why? Beth, he’s…”

“My soulmate.”

“Oh. _Oh._ ”

“Yeah.”

“Did you know, about HYDRA?” Steve is suddenly intent, leaning forward, his coffee forgotten.

“Only what he told me, which wasn’t much. Mostly regrets, I think. He’s not the same person you knew.”

“How would you know that?”

“I met him when he broke into my apartment, intending to use me to get to you.”

“ _What_?”

“Steve, it’s fine, I promise. I said his words, and then he just…something clicked into place, and he left, and I didn’t see him for months, and then there was a snowstorm, and I was sick, and I honestly thought I was going to die, the heater was playing up and my cell phone had no signal but he showed up and looked after me, then disappeared again, and the next thing I know, I’m home, and he’s apparently the Sheriff in my hometown, and I just…” she swipes at her eyes. “It’s been insane, and we got married nine months ago, and I love him so much, Steve, I know he wasn’t a good person, and I know that he probably deserves to be locked up, but he’s trying so hard to be different. Maybe I’m being selfish, but I want my husband back.”

She hates the way the tears are clogging her voice, the strain in her ribs from caging up the sobs. Steve’s expression is shifting too fast for her to decipher, but eventually, he sighs and reaches over to take her hand and says, “Oh, Beth. I’m so sorry.”

“It’s not your fault. Just the way of the world.”

“I know, but, I can’t just let him go, not like that. He has to face court and serve his sentence. Just because he’s changed doesn’t mean he can’t get away without facing up to his crimes.”

“Where is he?”

“With the CIA, currently.”

She inhales, shuddering. _Hold it together,_ she thinks fiercely. “Can I see him?”

There’s a battle unfolding on Steve’s face; she watches it through blurry eyes, focussing on her breathing. Eventually, he nods, “I’ll see if I can call in a few favours.”

“Thank you so much,” she says, careful, trembling. “I owe you. I owe you _a lot_.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” he tells her, standing up. “You were my first friend in this century, Beth, and friends help each other out.”

*

**He had fought in the great war, I remembered. He had seen the sky burn, and slain a giant whose head brushed the clouds. For all his lightness, I found I could imagine it.**

*

_He knows the moment she walks into the room, even though his back is to the door, he feels time hold its breath, the air molecules pause in their mad vibrations off the walls. It’s been a while, he thinks wryly, continuing on his conversation with Derek Jackson. He’s learned more about farming in the last ten minutes than he’s cared to even think about before, and then Derek pauses, looks at someone over Brock’s shoulder, and grins, “Here’s the guest of honour! This is my gorgeous baby sister, Sheriff.”_

_Brock turns, and she’s there, just the way she’s always been, tall and blonde and smiling. She’s in a blue shirt and jeans, this time, glowing with her family around her._

_“Hello, Beth,” he says, and the entire world clicks into place._

*

The thing he hates most about cells is the lack of time. There aren’t any clocks in here, and they’d confiscated his wristwatch. Without mechanics and clogs, time is nothing. He breathes in minutes and breathes out hours. No-one has come to see him, there has been no mention of a lawyer, no-one except the guards who brought him here, the clang of the door, the curl of a lip. “HYDRA scum,” the guard had spat, before locking the door and leaving him here, half out of his mind with worry for Beth. He hopes Officer Alcott had managed to get word to her, because they sure as hell aren’t letting him send any messages.

He shouldn’t have gone to the incident, they’d said over the dispatch radio that the Avengers were there, it was a risk he shouldn’t have taken, but it was his job, and he’s damned if he doesn’t do what he’s supposed to. He’s playing by the rule-book now, that’s what he promised himself, and if this means getting arrested and facing life in prison, then it’s what it is. He only wishes he didn’t have Beth; this would have been so much _easier_ if he was a lone operative, if he didn’t have anyone else’s happiness precariously intertwined with his.

Rogers had come over to co-ordinate the clean up. Brock had got out of the car, was dispatching officers to put tape up around the site, and then he’d turned and been face to face with Captain America in all his star-spangled glory, just the way it had been on those missions when Rogers had been assigned to his STRIKE team a whole lifetime ago. Rogers’ eyes had widened in recognition, then narrowed, and he’d said, “Don’t put up a fight and no-one will get hurt.”

There’s a rattle, and then a different guard appears outside the bars, younger. Brock can see the fear in the way she holds her shoulders. “Hands,” she snaps, in a good approximation of someone older and less scared. He goes to the bars and puts his hands through, wondering what torment they’ve dreamed up for him. They’re going to have to use a lot of imagination if they want to best years of STRIKE training, the experimental treatments HYDRA liked to put all field commanders through, the building collapsing in on him in a rain of fire and concrete and blind, suffocating panic. She clicks buzzing handcuffs around them, and then unlocks the door. There’s another guard waiting down the end of the corridor, and the two frogmarch him out of the cells, past curious faces, through endless, blank grey corridors, and into a blank meeting room. There are two chairs. He sits down, and the female guard takes up a position in the corner of the room. Voices, coming down the corridor, and then the door bursts open, and all he sees is blonde hair before Beth collides with him, bending down to fling her arms around his neck.

“Thank _god,_ ” she whispers. Her shoulder is digging into his throat and he can barely breathe through her hair, but she’s here and how and…

“What are you _doing_ here?” he asks. She draws back; her eyes are shiny and red, and her skin has flared up the way it does when she gets stressed. She’s not let go of him, and he has to wonder if he’s dreaming.

“I used my connections,” she says, and he looks past her to see Rogers standing in the doorway, arms folded and looking (or at least pretending to look) unimpressed. Rogers nods at him, and he should reply, he knows he should reply and say thank you, but he’s so floored that he can hardly breathe, let alone form words. “I’m going to get you out of here,” Beth says, her jaw stubborn. Her eyes blaze. “It’s going to be okay. I’m going to sort this out.”

“Pretty sure there are some things nothing can sort out,” he tells her gently, and she shakes her head. Her hand is warm on his cheek, she is electricity, here and alive and sparking with desperate fury, and _god,_ he loves her, he loves this woman so much, it pours out from his chest and threatens to engulf him.

“I’m a writer,” she says, fiercely. “We of all people know nothing is impossible.”

*

**My skin was glowing, my teeth set. My lioness lashed her tail.**

**_Does no one have the courage? Will no one dare face me?_ **

*

She meets him outside the court-room as they’re about to take him away. There’s another lump in her throat, and absently, she wonders whether she’s ever going to run out of tears, the amount she’s cried in the last month and a half. They’ve loosened the handcuffs enough that he can hold her, and he does now, wrapping his arms tightly around her and resting his face in her hair. She can feel the steady rhythm of his heart against her chest.

“It’s only five years, Beth,” he says. “It’ll go quick, I promise.”

She hiccups a little, presses her cheek closer against his shoulder, trying to memorise the warmth of him, the rasp of his stubble in her hair, the flex of his fingers against her back.

“Five years too long.”

“Better five years than a lifetime. You’re a marvel.”

“Jennifer did most of it.”

“You convinced Jennifer to defend me.”

She draws away a little, looks up into his eyes. “I’ll be in to visit, every week.”

“I know. I love you.”

“I love you too.”

He kisses her, the chains on his wrists heavy against her stomach, and she clings onto this, this moment, pretends that they are back in their kitchen and Brock is off to work and she’s off upstairs to continue her book, that sunlight is streaming in through the window, and somewhere a wasp is buzzing irritatedly, and she is happy and content and saying goodbye for the day instead of for five whole years. Then there are footsteps, and they break apart. Jennifer and Steve are waiting in the doorway.

“Thank you,” Brock says to them, voice hoarse. “I’ll never be able to repay you.”

“Serve your sentence, and do better,” Steve replies.

Jennifer grins, “Just doing my job.”

The guards re-appear, and Beth kisses him one last time before stepping away. He looks over his shoulder until he’s through the door, and then he’s gone, and she’s alone, swaying, in a corridor, watching five years of their life disappear with him through that doorway. Steve puts an arm around her shoulder, and it takes all her strength not to collapse.

“Come on, Beth,” he says. “Let me take you home.”

*

**That is what exile meant: no one was coming, no one ever would. There was fear in that knowledge, but after my long night of terrors it felt small and inconsequential. The worst of my cowardice had been sweated out. In its place was a giddy spark. I will not be like a bird bred in a cage, I thought, too dull to fly even when the door stands open.**

**I stepped into those woods and my life began.**

*

_He opens the book, feeling the thick pages slide against his skin, wondering when the last time was he’d held something so beautiful. It falls to the dedication page; his breath sticks in his throat._

_[to brock – have courage, my heart – and to all those living with a family member behind bars]_

*

Beth is woken by the buzz of her alarm, and lies, thoughts sluggish with drowsiness, under her covers, knowing that today is momentous, but forgetting why. Her bed is so cosy and warm, and she stretches her feet out, yawning – the thought hits her mid-yawn, and then suddenly she can’t lie still anymore. She clambers out of bed, pulls open the curtains; the sky is sun-drenched and dazzling, light pours through the city streets like syrup six floors below. Her phone is on the table: there is a text from Bucky:

_We still on for this morning?_

She texts back – yes – and then puts the kettle on, restlessness buzzing around her head. Today’s the day. _Today is the day._ The words roll around her mouth, and she says them out loud, over and over again, wondering at the shape of them against her teeth. At ten, her doorbell buzzes, and she runs down the stairs, grabbing three fat letters out of her mailbox and shoving them into her bag. One of them is from her publisher, she’s sure, but she can’t bring herself to bother with them yet. Today isn’t a day for her characters, or for book signings, or for advocacy. Today is a day for _her._

“Hey Buck, ready to roll?” she asks, and he just smiles at her, shy and quiet and the exact opposite of how he used to be, as Steve confessed to her one night just after they’d brought Bucky home. He’d showed up at her flat at around midnight and sat on her sofa with a bottle of vodka – not that it helps, he’d said, miserably – and they’d stayed up until five am, wondering how to piece a person back together.

They walk in companionable silence to a new place – Bucky is intent on trying every single café in New York, and two years in he’s not even half-way – and sit down at one of the outside tables, Bucky’s back against the angle between the coffee-shop window and the jutting façade of the next building so he can see the entire street.

“Earth to Beth,” he says eventually, and she snaps out of daydreams. “Were you even listening?”

“Sorry, what?”

He gives her an exasperated, fond smile. “Canada or Paris?”

“For your anniversary? Um, Canada. Steve likes hiking, doesn’t he?”

Bucky pulls a face, and she laughs, but her mind is wandering, and she can’t stop looking at her watch. Eventually, Bucky puts a hand over hers. “Are you feeling okay?”

“Just nervous. And excited. I can’t wait, but I’m so scared, what if everything’s changed?”

“You’ve both changed,” he says. “It’s been five years, people don’t stop changing.”

“That’s helpful.”

“It’s true, though. But if you love him enough, and you’re stubborn enough, and believe me, you’ve got enough stubbornness for this entire city, you’ll make it work. It’s going to be fine.”

“Thanks,” she says. “I’m sorry I’m being so distracted, I just…”

“Stop apologising,” he tells her. “It’s going to be fine.”

*

She stands in the lobby of the jail, too full of nervous energy to even think about sitting down, Bucky and Steve had dropped her off like they always do, but this time, Steve had given her a big hug and Bucky had grinned at her, and said, “Go get him, girl.”

There’s a clanking noise, and footsteps, and voices, and then one of the guards unlocks the big metal grille, and then he’s coming out, free of handcuffs and time-limits, and then he’s looking up and she’s tearing the space apart to fling herself into his arms, and they’re pressed close, her mouth is on his and it’s been five whole years, five years of weekly visits and long letters and waking up to an empty bed. He’s gotten thinner, she thinks, running her hand up the knobs of his spine. Tears blur her vision, but she can’t stop smiling, she thinks that her face is going to break apart with the force of it.

“Hello,” she says, as though it’s a normal day back in Kansas and he’s just walked in the door from work.

“Hello,” he replies, resting his forehead against hers, one hand holding her face.

*

Much later, they lie together in bed – theirs now, not hers – with the window flung wide and the radio crackling nonsense from the kitchenette.

“I have a surprise for you,” she says, uncurling herself from his arms. Her legs ache, and she loves the way she can still feel the press of his body against hers. She goes to the bookshelf and pulls it out; he’s watching her as though he cannot get enough of the way she moves, soft and naked, her blonde hair gleaming in the lamplight. She tucks herself back into him, hands him the book.

“Yes, I know,” he says, confusedly, tracing his fingers over the title, feeling the letters under his skin. “You brought me a copy to read when it was published.”

“No, look here.” She points to the line of script they’ve added to the cover, just below the title. His eyes dip, and she feels his sudden intake of breath.

“ _Beth_.” His voice is wondering. “You won it?”

She’s grinning again, leaning up on one elbow to look at him, her eyes mapping the scars on his cheek and above his eyebrow, the hollow at his throat, the way his skin is stretched and mottled with old burns over his muscles and bones. “Two weeks ago. I wanted to wait until you were free.”

“You are amazing,” he tells her, his voice cracking, and she just smiles, leaning down to press her lips against the curve of his jaw. He smells like tea-tree soap and safety. Outside, horns blare. His arm pulls her closer. She closes her eyes and sketches the future in her thoughts. His breath brushes her ear, and quietly, he says:

“Thank you.”

*

**I cupped my own hands in the dark. I did not have a thousand wiles, and I was no fixed star, yet for the first time I felt something in that space. A hope, a living breath, that might yet grow between.**

*****

**.FIN.**

**Author's Note:**

> I always feel as though Beth’s book is called The Lavender Fields, mostly because it’s a recurring theme throughout this story. I hope I’ve done justice to Rumlow – I always think he’s such an interesting character, mostly because he’s a flat-out villain in MCU canon, and I like to see what makes villains tick. Having said that, I am aware that he technically belongs to a neo-Nazi group in canon, and I had wobbles about the morality of writing this piece, since I think authors have quite a lot of responsibility regarding what they write about. However, having said that, people are always in the process of producing and reproducing themselves, and the potential for redemption is something that, in my opinion, is a driver in a lot of lives (or maybe I’m waffling and have been reading too much Victor Hugo). Therefore, I guess this note is just a disclaimer: yes, I know he’s an evil bastard in canon, and I hope I’ve made it clear in this work that both he (and I) completely loathe his past actions, and that he’s trying to become a better person.


End file.
